Rosa Luxemburg Internet Archive
The Revolution in Russia
Written: ~ February, 1905
First Published: February 8, 1905
Source: Zeitschrift fòr die Interessen der Arbeiterinnen, no. 3, February 8th,1905.
Transcription/Markup: Dario Romeo and Brian Basgen
Online Version: Rosa Luxemburg Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2000
On January 22nd in Petersburg [January 9th
according to the Russian used Julian
calender], the first mass revolutionary rising of the
Russian proletariat against absolutism was put down
'victoriously' by the terrorist government, that is, it was
drowned in the blood of thousands of defenceless workers, in the
blood of the murdered men, women and children of the people
[Bloody
Sunday]. It is possible that - at least in Petersburg
itself - a lull in the revolutionary movement has set in. The
tidal wave is now surging from Petersburg, from the north, down
over the huge empire, and is engulfing, one after another, all
the great industrial cities of Russia. Anyone who had expected
the revolution to triumph at one blow, anyone in Petersburg who,
following the 'victory' of the policy of blood and iron, might
now wish to abandon himself, depending on whose side him takes,
to a pessimistic defeatism or to a premature exultation at the
restoration of 'order' - such a person would only prove that the
history of revolutions with its inner iron laws has for him
remained a sealed book.
It took an eternity - at least when measured against
revolutionary impatience and against the agony of the Russian
people - for the fire of revolution to kindle into a bright
blaze beneath the centuries-old ice-coating of absolutism. It
might and surely will take a very long period of terrible
struggles, alternating between popular victories and defeats,
exacting innumerable victims, before the bloodthirsty beast of
absolutism - dangerous still, even as it writhes in its
death-throes - is beaten down once and for all. We must make
ready for a revolutionary epoch in Russia counted in years, not
in days and months, similar to the great French Revolution.
And yet, all lovers of civilization and freedom, that is, the
international working class, can rejoice from the bottom of
their hearts. The cause of freedom has now been won in Russia;
the cause of international reaction has now, on January 22nd, on
the streets of Petersburg, had its bloody Jena. For on this day
the Russian proletariat burst on the political stage as a class
for the first time; for the first time the only power which
historically is qualified and able to cast Tsarism into the
dustbin and to raise the banner of civilization in Russia and
everywhere has appeared on the scene of action. The guerrilla
war against absolute power in Russia has lasted for almost a
century. As early in 1825, there was a revolt in Petersburg
instigated by the sons of the highest of aristocracy, by
officers attempting to shake off the chains of despotism. The
monuments to this abortive and cruelly suppressed rising can
still be found in the snowfields of Siberia, where dozens of the
noblest victims were buried for all eternity. Secret
conspiratorial societies and attempted assassinations increased
during the 1850s, but again 'order' and terror triumphed over
the band of desperate fighters. During the 1870s, a strong party
of the revolutionary intelligentsia was formed which aspired,
with the support of the peasant masses, to bring about a
political revolution by means of systematic, terroristic
assassination attempts on the Tsar. It soon became apparent,
however, that the peasant masses of the time were an inert
element and quite unsuitable for revolutionary
movements. Similarly, the assassination of the Tsar proved to be
a quite powerless weapon for doing away with Tsarism as a ruling
system.
Following the defeat of the terrorist movement in Russia in the
1880s, both Russian society and the lovers of freedom in Western
Europe were seized by a profound defeatism. The ice-block of
absolutism appeared to be unmovable and the social condition of
Russia seemed hopeless. And yet precisely at this moment in
Russia was born the movement whose result was to be January 22nd
of this year; that moment was - Social Democracy.
From the 1860s and following its serious defeat in the Crimean
war, Russian Tsarism made a desperate attempt to transplant
Western European capitalism into Russia. The bankrupt absolute
regime, for fiscal and military purposes, needed railways and
telegraphs, iron and coal, machines, cotton and cloth. The
absolute regime nurtured capitalism by all the methods of
pillaging the people and by the most ruthless policy of
protective tariff - and this unconsciously dug its own grave. It
lovingly nursed the exploiting capitalist class - and thus
produced a proletariat outraged at exploitation and suppression.
The role for which the peasantry had proved itself incapable
became the historical task of the urban, industrial working
class in Russia, and this class became the pillar of the
movement for freedom and revolution. The untiring underground
work of enlightenment performed by Russian Social Democracy
brought about in a few years what a century of the most valiant
revolts by the intelligentsia could not, namely the shaking of
the foundations of the old stronghold of despotism.
All the oppositional and revolutionary forces in Russian society
can now make themselves felt: the elementary, confused outrage
of the peasant, the liberal dissatisfaction of the progressive
nobility, the thrust towards freedom of the educated
intelligentsia, of the professors, man of letters and
lawyers. Based on the revolutionary mass movement of the urban
proletariat, and marching along behind it, they can all lead a
great army of fighting people, one people, against Tsarism. But
the power and the future of the revolutionary movement lies
entirely and exclusively in the class-conscious Russian
proletariat, since only they know what it is to sacrifice their
lives by the thousand on the battlefield of freedom. And though
at first the leaders of the rising might be chosen fortuitously,
though the rising might be clouded outwardly by all kinds of
illusions and traditions - it is reality the results of the
enormous amount of political enlightenment which has been
propagated invisibly among the Russian working class in the past
two years by Social-Democratic agitation.
In Russia, as in the whole world, the cause of freedom and
social progress now lies with the class-conscious
proletariat. It is in very good hands!